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PAUL KERES - Chess player

2005-06-14 15:25:11

Paul Keres was one of the most important figures in the history of chess; he is loved and respected by his fellow countrymen not only because of his great talent but also because he shared the fate of his fatherland in reaching the world arena.

Keres - Botvinnik 1947

Paul Keres was born in Narva on 7 January 1916. At the University of Tartu, he studied mathematics from 1938 to 1941. In 1935, he became the Estonian chess champion for the first time. In the years 1936 – 1940, Keres was the editor-in-chief of the journal "Estonian Chess". Paul Keres first appeared in the international chess arena in the mid-1930s, and remained a prominent figure there for years.

In 1938, he shared the first place with Fine in the memorable AVRO tournament, but after additional calculations Paul Keres was announced the winner. However, the title match with Alekhine did not follow. After the war, he was eclipsed by Botvinnik, though still retaining his place among the world's top class players.

By the end of the 1950s, he was the strongest chess player in the world (at least, as revealed by the performance ratios calculated post factum, by the ELO ratings). He fell short, by a whisker, of the chance to compete for the title of World Champion. That right was snatched away, in sequence, by Tal and Petrosian.

Chess Olympics in Helsinki in 1952. Paul Keres playing for the Soviet Union team on the first board.

In the years 1953 – 1962, Keres shared second and fourth place once, and placed second three times. This earned him the droll title "Forever Second". Keres remained among the world's best competing chess players until the mid-1960s. And even after that, he was still able to achieve remarkable results. In 1959 and 1962, Paul Keres wasnamed Estonia’s best sportsman of the year. At the Chess Olympics, Paul Keres received a team gold medal seven times.

At the Chess Olympics in Nice in 1974, a prposal was made to set up Paul Keres as the candidate for FIDE president. One of the initiators, the well-known chess-player Milunka Lazareviè asked Keres, "How much can you independently, without Moscow, make decisions?" The answer was, "Independently, I can only write books…". In the Soviet Union time, sports, just like the arts were politicised. This meant that an athlete's (or chess player's) career was very dependent upon the opinions and decisions of Party and government bureaucrats.

Paul Keres's funeral in 1975

In 1975, the great Estonian grandmaster Paul Keres died suddenly at the age of 59. This perennial world championship contender, was, for the remarkably long span of thirty years (ca. 1936-1965), among the top ten chess players in the world.

Since the year 1969, an annual chess tournament named after Keres has been held in Tallinn. Starting in 1976, it has been called the Paul Keres Memorial. There are also a number of chess clubs and festivals named after him.

Paul Keres was one of the greatest players in chess history, a leading contender for the World Championship for a third of a century, and perhaps the strongest player to have never played a match for the World Championship. Thanks to his modesty, honesty, and open-minded approach to chess, Keres was respected and loved by not only his fellow Estonians, but also by chess enthusiasts the world over. An interesting fact is that Paul Keres is probably the only chess player whose portrait is on a banknote - the Estonian five kroon bill.

In 2000, people in the countries of West and East Virumaa elected Keres "Viru Vägev (powerful) of the 20th century", and nationally he was elected the Estonian Sportsman of the Century.

USA Champion Reuben Fine:

"At the Warsaw team tournament in 1935, the most surprising discovery was a gangling, shy, 19-year-old Estonian. Some had never heard of his country before, nobody had ever heard of Keres. But his play at top board was a wonder to behold. Not merely because he performed creditably in his first serious encounters with the worlds greatest; others have done that too. It was his originality, verve, and brilliance which astounded and delighted the chess world."

The Czech chess newspaper "Sachovy Tyden" (1937):

"Keres is now the most admirable phenomenon. With one and a half years he has played such brilliant games of chess that most cannot do during their whole lives. He is alone, without any predecessors, no one can imitate him without impunity. This passionately conquering man is the Paganini of chess and he plays his devilish melodies with one hand."

Golombek (Times 2.7.1977):

"Little Estonia long shadow… At Amsterdam in 1954 he scored 96,4 per cent on fourth board and won another game so brilliant against Sajtar of Czechoslovakia that the Soviet non-playing captain, Kotov, told to me that it was "a true Soviet game". I told this to Keres who, with the nearest approach to acerbity I ever saw him show, said: "No, it was a true Estonian game.""

Ex-champion Boris Spassky, Keres’s most devoted "disciple", in his memoirs:

"I loved Paul Petrovitch with a kind of special, filial feeling. Honesty, correctness, discipline, diligence, astonishing modesty – these were the characteristics that caught the eye of the people who came into contact with Keres during his lifetime. But there was also something mysterious about him. I had an acute feeling that Keres was carrying some kind of a heavy burden all through his life. Now I understand that this burden was the infinite love for the land of his ancestors, an attempt to endure all the ordeals, to have full responsibility for his every step. I have never met a person with an equal sense of responsibility. This man with internally free and independent character was at the same time a very well disciplined person. Back then I did not realise that it is discipline that largely determines internal freedom.

For me, Paul Keres was the last Mohican, the carrier of the best traditions of classical chess and – if I could put it this way – the Pope of chess.

Why did he not become the champion? I know it from personal experience that in order to reach the top, a person is thinking solely of the goal, he has to forget everything else in this world, toss aside everything unnecessary – or else you are doomed. How could Keres forget everything else?"